Host firewalls typically configure different firewall profiles depending on the network to which the host is connected. Currently, three standard types of profiles can be offered—work, home, and public. In other words, if a user connects to a work network, the host firewall is in the work profile; if the user is at home, the host firewall is in the home profile. The public firewall tends to be very restrictive and the work/home firewalls tend to be less restrictive.
In multi-homed machines (connected to multiple networks at the same time), the host firewall needs to determine a firewall profile for the machine. In such instances, the host firewall selects the most restrictive of the firewall profiles. For example, if the machine is connected to both a corporate network (corpnet) and to a public network at local business, the public profile is applied, since the public profile is typically the more restrictive of the profiles. However, this is a hindrance for seamless connectivity, since machines on the corpnet cannot contact this machine due to the restrictive profile selected for the firewall.